Migration, Again

What is certain is that since Donald Trump, the U.S. government has been somewhat tight-lipped regarding the issue of undocumented migrants in Mexico.

Migration problems and the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border will be a policy focus in Washington, but no one is sure of its role: a point of contention or one of agreement.

Or the most likely, as has been the case in the last few decades: a clash between two different visions of migration and its role in the U.S. With Congress split down the middle and tiny majorities, Democrat in the Senate and Republican in the House of Representatives, extremist groups and their demands gain strength.

What’s certain is that both parties agree on the importance of resolving the problem that has eluded both sides, as much for supporters of greater openness as for those who favor more restrictive policies.

But there are important divergences in terms of how they do so, and in the meantime, the internal political game continues.

No one was surprised when former President Donald Trump, who ran on an explicitly anti-immigrant platform in 2016, repeated his stance in the speech announcing his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

For the magazine Americas Quarterly, from the Americas Society, Trump has adopted a transactional approach to regional foreign policy: “As long as the governments of Central America and Mexico detained migrants, they would receive a blank check to dismantle democracy.”*

The same magazine noted that in 2020, current President Joe Biden campaigned to change course, and that in his few months in office, curbing corruption and democratic erosion in Central America became the dominant theme of his Western Hemisphere policy. However, according to critics, these policies have now changed.

The truth is that since Trump, the U.S. administration has seemed somewhat tight-lipped regarding the problem of migrants in Mexico, although this is consistent with reports that the U.S. has assumed a hands-off policy in exchange for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government adopting a migration policy that helps the U.S.

The fact is that the U.S. view of migration issues in Latin American countries, including Mexico, is determined by its own domestic policy interests.

In this sense, the political-electoral situation in Texas has become a point of contention. To begin with, it is a border state that bears the brunt of immigration problems and where there appears to be increasing pressure for tougher policies.

Democrats retained their seats in border districts, and at least two of them, Henry Cuellar and Vicente González, did so based on “hardline” positions that could be seen as a solution to retaining or winning voters in South Texas, that is, the border with our country.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be independently verified.